4 ms·

Follow-up on the 'Firefox v3.5 fiasco'

29 points by soundsop 17y ago

blasdel 17y ago
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c121 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c121 They're not removing the stupid tmp-walker, just keeping it from being called on XP (most of the time, maybe?) They seem to be deluded that it's super important to get more entropy than everyone else (TCP, IE, etc.) on Win2k and WinCE.
- drhowarddrfine 17y ago
  Here's a nickel, kid. Get a real computer.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Actually they are keeping it as a plan-B for older releases of Windows that can't generate good random numbers. Keep in mind there is no IE 7 or 8 for Win2K. They should be praised for supporting those users.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    If the default entropy source on those platforms was actually inadequate in any way, it would have the everliving fuck exploited out of it, at levels far below their product. Nobody gives a shit about HTTPS seed quality if the entire TCP stack is compromised! They should be excoriated for delivering a massive (and pointless) performance regression to their users with the slowest computers. Every time they pull shit like this, it just means that fewer users will upgrade, not just now but in the future.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      It's actually the opposite; you use TLS exactly because you're not supposed to trust the TCP stack. But your basic point holds. There's lots of Win2k deployed in sensitive production locations, and if they didn't have secure random numbers, we'd have bigger problems than Firefox.
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      - swolchok 17y ago
        I thought I used TLS because I didn't want my sensitive data going over the wire in plaintext.
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        "we'd have bigger problems than Firefox" It's not like win2K is super-secure... Seriously, it _really_ scares me when I see medical equipment running any Windows (not only win2k or earlier) being networked in hospitals.
vinutheraj 17y ago
Here's some info from - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c98 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c98 Here's the results of cold start time; the average of at least 3 tests. Windows XP SP3, Pentium4 2.8G, 1.5G memory Firefox 3.5 : 34.3 sec Build 1 (file scan completely disabled) : 19.7 sec Build 2 (CSIDL_INTENET_CACHE disabled) : 20.0 sec Build 3 (CSIDL_COMPUTERSNEARME disabled) : 19.7 sec As you can see, your builds are faster than 3.5, and I guess the difference between builds is the measurement deviation. Both 3.5 and each builds can warm start within 1 or 2 secs. There's no significant impact with antivirus on/off on my side. (Avast! 4.8) Hope this helps. Even without file scanning it takes around 20 secs !!
- halo 17y ago
  ...for a 6 year old PC.
  - Tuna-Fish 17y ago
    On my 5-year old pc, ff 3.5 boots from cold cache in ~4 seconds. During those 4 seconds, the machine is capable of: Executing more than 8 billion instructions. Reading sequentially trough more than 20 gigabytes of memory. Reading more than 240 megabytes from disk. If pretty much anything takes more than 10 seconds to load on any hardware even approaching modern, it means it was written badly.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      On a machine that's not constantly being defragged, temporary files will be spread out all over the place. No way can you read 240 MB of fragmented files in 4 seconds after a cold boot. Simply not possible on consumer-level magnetic spindle media.
      - derefr 17y ago
        > On a machine that's not constantly being defragged Windows does "constantly defrag" in the background.
tokenadult 17y ago
"It's all too easy to simply close the eyes and ignore problems reported by perhaps a minority of the users by cooking up excuses for not dealing with them, but that's not the solution: the problems won't go away by ignoring them, the vocal minority might actually be representing a big non-vocal group or worse: a big non-vocal groups of ex-users." This point about usability generalizes very well and applies to many more software design issues than the issue at hand.

29 points by soundsop 17y ago

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c121 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c121 They're not removing the stupid tmp-walker, just keeping it from being called on XP (most of the time, maybe?) They seem to be deluded that it's super important to get more entropy than everyone else (TCP, IE, etc.) on Win2k and WinCE.

drhowarddrfine 17y ago
Here's a nickel, kid. Get a real computer.
rbanffy 17y ago
Actually they are keeping it as a plan-B for older releases of Windows that can't generate good random numbers. Keep in mind there is no IE 7 or 8 for Win2K. They should be praised for supporting those users.
- blasdel 17y ago
  If the default entropy source on those platforms was actually inadequate in any way, it would have the everliving fuck exploited out of it, at levels far below their product. Nobody gives a shit about HTTPS seed quality if the entire TCP stack is compromised! They should be excoriated for delivering a massive (and pointless) performance regression to their users with the slowest computers. Every time they pull shit like this, it just means that fewer users will upgrade, not just now but in the future.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    It's actually the opposite; you use TLS exactly because you're not supposed to trust the TCP stack. But your basic point holds. There's lots of Win2k deployed in sensitive production locations, and if they didn't have secure random numbers, we'd have bigger problems than Firefox.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - swolchok 17y ago
      I thought I used TLS because I didn't want my sensitive data going over the wire in plaintext.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      "we'd have bigger problems than Firefox" It's not like win2K is super-secure... Seriously, it _really_ scares me when I see medical equipment running any Windows (not only win2k or earlier) being networked in hospitals.

vinutheraj 17y ago

Here's some info from - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c98 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501605#c98 Here's the results of cold start time; the average of at least 3 tests. Windows XP SP3, Pentium4 2.8G, 1.5G memory Firefox 3.5 : 34.3 sec Build 1 (file scan completely disabled) : 19.7 sec Build 2 (CSIDL_INTENET_CACHE disabled) : 20.0 sec Build 3 (CSIDL_COMPUTERSNEARME disabled) : 19.7 sec As you can see, your builds are faster than 3.5, and I guess the difference between builds is the measurement deviation. Both 3.5 and each builds can warm start within 1 or 2 secs. There's no significant impact with antivirus on/off on my side. (Avast! 4.8) Hope this helps. Even without file scanning it takes around 20 secs !!

halo 17y ago
...for a 6 year old PC.
- Tuna-Fish 17y ago
  On my 5-year old pc, ff 3.5 boots from cold cache in ~4 seconds. During those 4 seconds, the machine is capable of: Executing more than 8 billion instructions. Reading sequentially trough more than 20 gigabytes of memory. Reading more than 240 megabytes from disk. If pretty much anything takes more than 10 seconds to load on any hardware even approaching modern, it means it was written badly.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    On a machine that's not constantly being defragged, temporary files will be spread out all over the place. No way can you read 240 MB of fragmented files in 4 seconds after a cold boot. Simply not possible on consumer-level magnetic spindle media.
    - derefr 17y ago
      > On a machine that's not constantly being defragged Windows does "constantly defrag" in the background.

tokenadult 17y ago

"It's all too easy to simply close the eyes and ignore problems reported by perhaps a minority of the users by cooking up excuses for not dealing with them, but that's not the solution: the problems won't go away by ignoring them, the vocal minority might actually be representing a big non-vocal group or worse: a big non-vocal groups of ex-users." This point about usability generalizes very well and applies to many more software design issues than the issue at hand.